In usual pellet mills of this type (note e.g. the German Specification No. 3,121,613 or U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,764,951 2,798,444 or 2,908,038), the material to be pelleted is guided immediately to the press rollers via bent or tortuous deflector blades. Normally, at least one press roller, but in some cases also three such rollers, are used. Thereby, the deflector blades are arranged in such a manner that their respective end is situated immediately before the related press roller. Two types of solutions were hitherto applied for this purpose: either the pertaining deflector blade extended over the whole axial length of the die (see U.S. Pat. No. 2,798,444), or it was attempted to arrange the deflector blades outside the die, as far it is possible, so as they projected into the interior of the die only over part of the axial width of the latter. In the former case, it was a disadvantage that the deflector blades had to be located in the relatively narrow space within the die, whereby the uniformity of the supply of the material to be pelleted was improved, in comparison with the latter construction, but was ensured by no means; in general, the uniformity was dependent to a high extent upon the supply quantity of the preceding supply devices.
Therefore, one preferred to make allowance for a higher non-uniformity, if only a greater portion of the deflector blades could be mounted outside the die. Since, however, the deflector blades are only intended to equalize the supply, this measure had not the desired success. It was therefore already suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 3,723,042, to arrange the deflector blades immediately before the press rollers to extend over the entire width of the same, but to locate the press rollers to engage the outer circumference of the die. Actually, this leads to an unfavorable distribution of the forces acting on the press roller and on their bearings on the one hand, and to a relatively complicated shape of the deflector blades on the other hand; finally, the arrangement was extraordinarily bulky and expensive.